Business Tax Practicum
This course offers an innovative lens to critically explore issues of business taxation by examining entities and transactions in the social enterprise sector.
Social enterprises blur the traditional distinctions between for-profit and nonprofit entities by blending social mission and market-based, business strategies. The tax treatment of these hybrid entities is complex and an increasingly contested area of law. Students in the course apply their knowledge of business taxation and test their assumptions on taxing social enterprises by advising clients of the Social Enterprise and Economic Empowerment Clinic on tax-related issues.
Current UC Law SF students should consult the Clinical Programs intranet page for the most up-to-date, detailed information on our clinics and field placements.
The classroom component of the course meets once a week to discuss substantive issues of social enterprise law, business taxation, and transactional lawyering. For example, the course examines dominant theories of doctrinal corporate and pass-through taxation law. It also encourages students to develop arguments for various tax treatments of social enterprise legal entities (nonprofits, hybrid entities, and traditional for-profit entities) and review the likely consequences that would flow from offering tax preferences to these entities and their corporate transactions.
Students work an average of eight (8) hours per week as legal counsel to social enterprises on business tax matters. Students work in pairs, communicate directly with clients, develop and implement case strategies, and lead weekly case meetings with Profs. Ball and Viswanathan.
Course Instructors
Manoj Viswanathan
Joseph W. Cotchett ’64 Professor of Law and Co-Director, UC Law SF Center on Tax Law
View Manoj Viswanathan’s Profile
Alina Ball
Professor of Law, Bion M. Gregory Chair in Business Law, and Co-Director of the Center for Racial and Economic Justice
View Alina Ball’s Profile